


Victims of Fate

by Alcoholic_Kangaroo



Category: Darkwing Duck (Cartoon 1991), DuckTales (Cartoon 1987), DuckTales (Cartoon 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bodyswap, F/M, M/M, casual homophobia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-17
Updated: 2021-03-22
Packaged: 2021-03-25 23:14:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30096639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alcoholic_Kangaroo/pseuds/Alcoholic_Kangaroo
Summary: Darkwing Duck and Drake Mallard wake up to realize they've somehow switched bodies with an alternative universe version of themselves.
Relationships: Drake Mallard/Launchpad McQuack, Fenton Crackshell-Cabrera/Gyro Gearloose, Fenton Crackshell/Gandra Dee, Morgana Macawber/Drake Mallard
Comments: 43
Kudos: 59





	1. Prologue - Darkwing Duck

**Author's Note:**

> Finally! I've been wanting to work on this for over a month but I had to wait until Dirty Wings finished up because I refused to start a new longfic until that one was done! Anyway, in this Drake is gonna be 2017 Drake and Darkwing is going to be 1991 Drake. Darkwing is straight with hints of early 90s homophobia, he's not outright hateful but he's going to be a bit of a product of his times.

How did somebody sneak into his bedroom in the middle of the night? That is the first thought that crosses Darkwing’s mind. He lies still, inhaling and exhaling in deep, controlled breaths, eyes closed tight. He wills the erratic thumping of his heart to calm. He is a superhero, he can handle this, but he can’t let whoever it is in bed with him to know that he is awake. He can’t let them know he knows.

There is a terrible weight across his hip that can only be that of a person’s arm slung around him. It’s a warm restraint, a deadweight pinning him down. The movement against his back is steady, rhythmic. The movement of somebody breathing against him. A broad, bare chest is flush against Darkwing’s body. The arm, the chest, they’re large, broad, masculine. A man is holding him as if he were a lover.

No way this person is Morgana, and why would it be anyway? Morgana never visits him here. His home is his sanctuary and Morgana is part of his other life. That isn’t to say she doesn’t know about his domestic cover, but there is something almost embarrassing about presenting that side of himself to her. She thinks so highly of him, she sees him as this mysterious creature of the night. So he mostly allows her to see the other side – the Ratcatcher, the tower, the smoke gun, the hat, the cape, the mask. Even when they’re in bed together he keeps the mask on. And sometimes the hat. She likes the hat; she says it makes him look like some film noir actor when the pale moonlight washes across his naked body through her large bedroom window. Desaturating them in a way that their intimate caresses seem less pornographic, more arthouse film.

He’s not wearing his hat. He’s not even wearing his mask. He is vulnerable, bare, wearing only the boxers he usually sleeps in.

No, not even that. Where are his boxers? He does not feel their familiar hug around his hips. He is completely nude. He never sleeps naked – what if Gosalyn walked in on him like that? The man behind him is completely nude. Darkwing can feel the man’s…thing…back there. Soft but persistent against his lower back.

But why is he here?

And how long has this man been here in this bed with him? Darkwing feels as if he would have noticed his presence earlier if it had been for long, he is not used to sleeping with anybody beside him and is sure he would have found it disturbing. Darkwing Duck sleeps alone.

There had been a short time when he had first brought Gosalyn home a few years ago where she had crawled into bed with him a few times a week, startled awake by a series of hyper-realistic nightmares that left her trembling with a tear-stained face, but she’s nearly twelve now and wouldn’t dream of climbing into her father’s bed. Even when he and Morgana engage in one of their late-night trysts, he never spends the night. There is no falling asleep in each other’s exhausted, sweat-soaked arms. No morning afters, no casual breakfasts. Darkwing is too busy for such leisure time. If he isn’t fighting crime, he has a daughter to tend to at home.

This is not Morgana. As tall as Morgana is, this person is even taller, and so much heavier. His arm is a suffocating weight around him. Who does Darkwing even know this size? Who would want to find him at his most vulnerable? Irrationally, a deep-seated fear arises within him. Does this man plan on forcing himself on him? Is he here to ravage him? Why would somebody go out of their way to have their way with him, though? He isn’t the spry young man he had once been, he is aging with thinning hair and an expanding waistline. Gosalyn says he has a dad bod.

No, whoever this is doesn’t want to sexually assault him. If they did they would have already done so. So who could it be? Who fits the description?

Steelbeak, maybe. His old nemesis is the first to come to mind. Not Negaduck or Megavolt or Quackerjack. They’re all much too small. But why would he break into his room just to cuddle him in the middle of the night? Darkwing breathes slowly, willing the anxiety in his chest down. And then he opens his eyes and looks down at the arm looped around him.

Pristine white feathers. Not Steelbeak then. Steelbeak’s pale yellow feathers might be easy to mistake as white in the right lighting but there is a bright morning sunlight washing directly over the bed and the feathers are as white as newly fallen snow.

Except there is no window facing the east in Darkwing’s bedroom. And definitely not such a giant window. Outside, Darkwing sees not his usual suburban neighborhood with its vibrant green trees but sky and the distant outline of the city.

He does not recognize this room, but it seems to be some sort of lair, similar to his own, but different. There is no bed in his tower. There had been, once, before Gosalyn had come along and changed his life for the better, but that idea almost feels like a dream now. Imagine sleeping alone in the tower without his family and the security of his own home.

Downgrading his status as a full-time vigilante to become a part-time suburban father had been the best thing he had ever done in his life. He just wishes he hadn’t waited until he was in his forties to find some balance in his life. He enjoys cooking and sewing costumes and cheering on his daughter at her hocket matches. He’s become a _cat person_.

The suburban life has softened him.

Right now, though, he wants to freak out. Has he been kidnapped? How? He isn’t normally a light sleeper. He can’t afford to be with a daughter like Gosalyn sneaking out at all hours. Perhaps he was drugged. But he cooked dinner last night, how could somebody sneak anything into their meal? Unless they slipped pills into his open wine bottle. He drinks wine every evening with dinner, a practice he had read a couple of years ago is supposed to be good for the heart, and if somebody had been watching him for a while they might have picked up on it.

Except he doesn’t have a headache, no dry mouth, nothing. Usually, there are some lingering effects of drugs. He hates to admit it but with his line of work, it wouldn’t be the first time.

He needs to think this over. He needs to do something. He needs to be stealthy.

Slowly, ever so slowly, he wiggles his arm free from the confines of his blanket. Reaching up to brush some feathers from his eyes, three things occur to him.

One, he does not have head feathers long enough to cover his eyes. He hasn’t worn his hair that long since his hippie phase in college and even if he wanted to grow bangs, his receding hairline would leave him looking like Ben Franklin.

Two, he is for some reason wearing a strange-looking watch on his wrist. It’s technical-looking but more streamlined than anything S.H.U.S.H. would provide him with. The face is square with what appears to be a small computer screen, the band is gray rubber. It lights up when he moves his arm, displaying the date and time but looking nothing like a normal digital watch at all.

And three, the arm he just moved, his arm, doesn’t look like his arm at all. It’s more muscular than his own, the biceps bulging, and the feathers have a slight orange tint to them. They’re still white, or perhaps more cream-colored, but they aren’t his usual shade of pristine white. The color stands out against the white sheets and the white feathers of his bed partner.

The shaking begins within out say on Darkwing’s part. It is violent and uncontrollable. Severe enough it wakes up the stranger behind him. He feels them shift, the arm around him tightening, pulling him close against that broad chest. A beak nuzzles into his upper back. An unrecognizable voice speaks in a deep voice slow with sleep. There is a sense of familiarity, a sense of closeness. Hands touch his chest, stroking his feathers with practiced ease.

“You okay, Drake? You’re shaking like a leaf.”

Drake?

They know his true identity?

Who even calls him Drake? He’s dad to Gosalyn, Dark to Morgana, DW to Launchpad. The Muddlefoots, maybe, but Darkwing is about ninety-nine percent certain he is not being spooned by Herbert Muddlefoot.

“Drake?”

“I’m…just feeling a little nauseous,” he lies. He scoots away from the stranger, needing to escape those arms, and sits up, slinging his legs over the side of bed. Whatever is going on here, he needs to keep it secret. He doesn’t know what is happening but it could be dangerous. No, it is most likely dangerous. Maybe he somehow slipped into the Negaworld again. Maybe whoever this is thinks he is Negaduck. Except he sees what appears to be a modified version of the Darkwing Duck costume hanging from a coatrack to one side of the lair and when he looks down at the floor, he sees a pair of Darkwing Duck slippers waiting for him to slip his feet into.

Darkwing Duck slippers? Since when has he had merch?

“I told you not to have that second beer before you went to bed,” the stranger says. Drake hears him move in the bed behind him, the mattress squeaking beneath the hefty weight.

Beer? Since when has Drake ever willingly consumed beer?

He slips his feet into the purple slippers that are vaguely shaped like his own face, stands up, closes his eyes, and takes a deep breath. Then he turns around and opens his eyes.

The man lying there, completely naked mind you, is vaguely familiar-looking. The blanket covers up to the hollows of his hips, just barely concealing his nudity, but Darkwing knows from feeling him against him that there is nothing covering the area below that blanket. The man is tall, muscular, with a broad chest, skinny waist, a shock of red hair falling over his eyes. A familiar-looking beak, large with a cleft in the chin, resembles the beak of only one person that he can think of.

“Launchpad?”

“Yeah, babe?”

It’s his sidekick. But it’s not. It looks like him as if he were drawn by an unskilled artist. Or one who just wanted to draw a more attractive version of Launchpad because he is overall more pleasing to the eye. His face is more handsome, his hair fuller, shinier. He even looks taller. It could be Launchpad’s younger brother who lucked out with the better genes. Except he answered when he said his name.

“I, um, did you see where my clothes went?”

The man raises an eyebrow at him. Then he slips out of bed, doing nothing to cover his exposed genitalia, and bends down to pick up something off the ground on the opposite side of the bed where Darkwing stands. Darkwing averts his eyes to avoid staring at the exposed buttcrack of another man.

“That bad?” Launchpad, this weird, alternative version of his Launchpad, asks, holding out a pair of violet boxers for him to take. The initials DW are printed in a regular pattern across the fabric in black and they seem far too small to fit Darkwing’s body. Except when he glances down to step into the underwear, he can’t help but gawk at how slim and streamlined his own waist looks. If anything, the boxers are baggy on him. “Go take a shower and I’ll go make some bacon. The grease should help settle your stomach.”

“Sounds good,” Darkwing agrees, smiling weakly. He looks around the room, trying to figure out where a bathroom would even be. The lair isn’t really a room, it’s almost more of a wall-less, open-plan apartment. He can tell by the looks of it that there has been some attempt to section areas off with bookcases and screens but this is the inside of someplace large and open like his tower. It might even be a tower, going by the view out the window. Not the same view as his own tower but not dissimilar.

If Launchpad notices his confusion, he doesn’t say anything about it. Instead, he walks around the bed and gives Darkwing a kiss on the cheek and, shockingly, a light smack on the butt. Legitimately feeling nauseous now, he frantically attempts to will away the shudder wanting to consume his body. He and Launchpad are obviously gay lovers in this world and showing disgust over a mere kiss would be a dead giveaway. But Darkwing has never kissed a man in his entire life and had never planned to do so. Apparently not noticing his discomfort, Launchpad turns and walks away. Darkwing lets out the breath he has been holding and his eyes dart around, desperately trying to locate the bathroom. To one side he sees the only area with an actual door, though the walls surrounding it appear to be made of cement.

Probably built for the construction crew or the safety inspector. He yanks open the door expecting a single toilet and maybe a showerhead with a drain in the middle of the room but is surprised to find a fully furnished bathroom instead. No bathtub, but the shower appears to be made of stainless steel and spotless clear glass sliders. It’s large and fully stocked with a variety of different containers of shampoo and conditioner and body washes.

Body washes? Are they women?

Well, they’re two men who appear to be in a most likely sexual relationship.

God, what if Darkwing is the woman in the relationship? He had been the little spoon.

Quickly, he jumps into the shower and spins the little knobs, adjusting and testing them until he figures out which is hot and which is cold and where they need to be set for the water to be hot but not scalding. As he’s doing so, he starts to lose it. His labored breathing begins to towards erratic, his head begins to spin from loss of oxygen. The water hitting the top of his head washes away the tears, but he still tastes them on his tongue as they fall past.

Only once the spray of the shower is pattering loudly against the glass, does Darkwing sink to the ground and bury his face in his palms and let go. He doesn’t understand what is going on and he feels like screaming but instead he cries, the only way for him to work through these emotions when he can’t even talk to his sidekick about it. His sidekick who is apparently now gay, and his boyfriend. He sits there, sobbing out his confusion and fear until the pounding on the door breaks him from his fog.

“Drake? You didn’t pass out in there, did you? Your food is getting cold.”

“I’ll, I’ll be right out, LP,” he calls backs, wiping at his face. He climbs back onto his feet, surprised by how easy the action is on these legs that aren’t even his. No creaking knees or sore back. He feels like he’s twenty years old again. “Just give me two more minutes, I’m, um, conditioning.”

That’s what gay men do, right? Take care of their hair? Explains why there is so much of it.


	2. Chapter 1 - Drake Mallard

Before landing his big opportunity as the Terror that Flaps in the Night, Drake Mallard used to accept any and every acting job he was offered. His initial successes had manifested in the form of a gig as a stunt double, a role that suited his physical strength and inborn resilience, and for a while he had assumed that would be about as far as he would ever rise in show biz. Simply speaking, most actors never make it in Hollywood. As it was, he had only nabbed the first stunt double role because one of the lighting guys on set happened to be the first cousin of his old college roommate.

Just as he had begun settling in to start building his reputation as a sturdy, dependable stunt guy, not a bad role at all for a young man of twenty-four, he had been scouted out at a party in West Hollywood where he had been schmoozing for job opportunities. The roster of attendees of said party far outshined his own status in the industry, but he had always been good at bluffing his way into these sorts of events. He looked the part of famous move star and as they always say, you have to fake it ‘till you make it.

So he showed up outside the Beverly Hills mansion wearing his best suit, hair gelled back to 80s-Ken-doll-perfection, and subtly brushed against a drunk young woman as she ranted about the injustice of playing second fiddle as the lead’s best friend rather than the lead herself.

“Like, why did I even shell out the money for these if I’m only going to get twenty minutes on screen?” Ms. Sloppy Drunk demanded to know in a nasal voice as she squeezed her own ample breasts between her hands.

When she had felt his hand on her, she turned angrily, accusing Drake of groping her in an uncalled for snotty tone, to which he just held up an innocent hand and apologized. “I’m 100% gay, it was just an accident, I swear.”

Turning back to the man she had been talking to, a teenager whose eyes were zeroed in directly on her cleavage, she didn’t even notice her invitation had disappeared. And by the time she did, Drake had already flashed it to the bouncer and disappeared through those giant wooden doors. After that, it was just a game of wondering around with a glass of sparkling wine, waiting for the right conversation to come along that would call for his intrusion. He had played the game dozens of times before, his inane senses always signaling when to strike.

Except that time, he had been the one sought out.

“That face!” Ms. Charlene Velveteen had exclaimed, grabbing his cheeks between her well-manicured hands, and shaking him as if she were a rabid dog and he were her beloved Kong toy. She was an older woman, well into her 50s, with white-blond curls done up in an overly elaborate hairdo. “You are absolutely gorgeous, please let me have you.”

“I, uh,” he had stuttered nervously at the time, rubbing at the back of his neck in flustered embarrassment. A movement others have mentioned as being a particularly charming habit of his, as were the flushed cheeks and stutter as he tried to think of a response. It’s not that he doesn’t realize he’s attractive, he’d had a steady line of girls falling at his feet since puberty, but nobody had ever so blatantly come on to him in such a way. So he blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “I’m gay, actually, ma’am.”

“Oh, that,” the glamorously dressed woman had snorted. She linked her arm around his elbow and started leading him to the bar. She was suspiciously strong for a woman of her age, and she knew how to walk in heels. “So what? Who isn’t gay in Hollywood these days? I’m married. I want you in my movie. You can act, I presume?”

Drake had all but peed himself like an overexcited lapdog that night. The stylish clothes, the way she talked, the fact she had even been attending such an exclusive party, it had convinced him that she must have been some famous, renowned director or producer. But while her presence had been more legitimate than Drake’s, she had merely been a financer, a trophy wife of some important official for one of the country’s largest banks. Her husband allowed her to throw money on her petty projects as it "kept her entertained."

When she had shoved him at a pudgy older man with a combover and told him “Find a role for him if you want that budget increase you requested,” Drake’s hopes had all but come crashing down.

The role had been in a B horror movie and any interest Ms. Charlene Velveteen had in him that night must have been quickly forgotten (the multiple martinis probably helped) because he never saw or heard from her again. But he did nab his first speaking role that wasn’t in a muscle cream advertisement. Which lead to another one, and another one, and another one. And okay, yes, bit parts in low-budget horror films that inevitably end up being released straight to DVD aren’t exactly a success worth writing home about, but they paid better than working as a stunt double, put his face out there, and were much easier on his body.

Speaking of which, his body really had been the magic key that opened those doors. His horror film era had corresponded directly to the time in his life when he had been in his peak physical prime – classically handsome with a slim waist and broad shoulders as result of his strict workout routine, a lucky catch. More often that not in the beginning, he had been hired merely as a heaping helping of fanservice for any viewers sick of seeing only the hot young blond cheerleaders being sliced apart, a scrumptious piece of eye candy wrapped up snugly in a skintight tank top if you will. Always the tank tops. They liked to show of his figure and the fake corn syrup blood he inevitable always ended up splattered in just made the fabric cling to him even more provocatively.

But there was more to it than a pretty face and good figure. Hollywood is full of those. It was during this time in his career that Drake discovered his secret talent. If his good looks were the key to opening the door, this talent was the first step inside. And he wouldn’t even know about this little gift of his if it hadn’t been for Ms. Charlene Velveteen.

Drake Mallard can scream.

Anybody can scream, of course. But Drake Mallard can _scream_.

In every single one of those B-movies, Drake’s unfortunate character died a painful death at the end of a knife, or razor, or machete, or chainsaw. And every time he acted his way through one of these scenes, he screamed his lungs out so hard he’d often lose his voice for a good week following the shot. His throat would be shredded from the inside and he’d spend the next couple of weeks downing slippery elm tea with lemon and honey, trying to patch up the damage just so he could do it again a couple of months later for another death scene.

He has a good set of lungs on him, a wide chest made strong through plenty of cardio and never weakened by tobacco or marijuana or vaping. The natural raspy quality of his voice accentuated the faux-agony of his tortured deaths and he started to gain a small reputation in the horror community.

“A few more films under his belt and he’ll be dubbed a bonified scream queen,” one respected film critic had said of him.

“It could be the start of a prosperous career,” another move reviewer said of his trademark acting approvingly. “We haven’t seen a good pretty boy scream queen in a generation but Mallard sure has the making of one."

“I want to tie him down on my bed and make him squeal like that,” another less family-friend commenter purred on her YouTube channel. She had been wearing a black leather mask that left Drake feeling slightly on edge afterward. He didn’t finish watching her video.

So that was his special talent. He made use of it liberally and deliberately until he finally passed the audition for Darkwing Duck, and though that didn’t exactly go as planned either, he never returned to his role of the “pretty boy scream queen” and he had never screamed like that again.

Until today.

His scream reverberates off the walls of the small, poorly decorated bedroom. It’s so loud, so anguished, it puts all his movie screen deaths to shame. And it triggers what sounds like a herd of stampeding elephants on the other side of the wall, a wall which could be hiding almost anything in existence on the other side of it because Drake has never seen what is on the other side.

The door slams open and Drake whirls around with wide eyes, in a panic but ready to take on an army of supervillains if needed. Instead, standing there looking worried and a little confused, is a large man and a small girl. Both sport vibrant red hair but the man has white feathers and the girl pale yellow. Still, judging by the color of the hair and the familiar way the man sets a giant hand on the girl’s head, he must be her father. But he looks so oddly familiar.

“Launchpad?” Drake croaks weakly, recognizing the distinguishing features of his lover even if everything about him is just off in every way. It isn’t difficult to guess what is going on here, not after how many years he has spent studying this exact type of thing. He has imagined this exact scenario so many times, this exact situation could be what happened if their experiments went wrong, but he hadn’t expected to just wake up in this nightmare one day.

“DW? What’s wrong?” Launchpad, or at least an alternate universe version of Launchpad, asks him, cocking his head in a concerned yet somehow distant manner. He does not try to take him in those large arms of his like Drake’s own Launchpad would do if he saw him trembling and near tears like this. He keeps his distance.

“Where is he Dad? I can take him on,” the small girl demands, brandishing a small child-size bow from seemingly nowhere, already strung with a red-feathered arrow. And where do you even buy a child-size bow in this day and age? She has it pointed far too closely towards his own face for comfort. “Was it Negaduck again? Blink twice if he’s hiding in the closet.”

“I…” Drake gapes at the two. Negaduck? _Dad_? Taking a deep breath to steel himself, he turns to once again look himself in the eye in the full-length mirror set up in the corner. The sight almost tears another scream from his wounded throat. He clenches his teeth and swallows, fighting against his own basic instincts. The white-feathered duck with a little tummy and aging lines around his eyes still blinks back at him. 

“Launchpad,” Drake begins, still staring at himself in the mirror. He can see Launchpad’s large figure looming behind him in the reflection. His voice comes out raspy and pained sounding from his throbbing throat which isn’t even his throat at all. Even his scream had sounded different and it left his chest aching. “Have you ever heard of the Solego Circuit?”

“The what?” Launchpad asks,

Drake just shakes his head. That would have just been too easy, wouldn’t it have been? Whoever did this to him never would have sent him to a universe so similar to his own. And it could have been anybody. His universe’s version of Taurus Bulba is the first name to come to his mind, but he's in jail and, besides, how many other versions of him are there out there? And how many other villains who would want to get rid of their dimension’s version of Darkwing Duck?

“Dad, are you okay?”

“I’m not, I mean,” he falls helplessly over his words, holding out his palms as if this gesture will somehow help make sense of the entire ordeal. “I’m, I’m …my name is Drake Mallard.”

“No duh,” the child snorts. At least she’s lowered that damn bow now. It hangs harmlessly at her side.

“I don’t have a child,” he tries to explain but the two just stare at him. He waves his hands helplessly. “How would I have a child? Unless…”

He turns to Launchpad, his eyes widening. The red hair. The gaudily decorated bedroom with the suburban homes just outside. Are they a family? Did they hire a surrogate? In this universe did they have a child? They must have been together for years in this world. Drake’s reflection in the mirror had offered up a middle age looking duck with at least fifteen years on his own age, probably more. The little girl looks about eight, maybe nine. Which means they would have had to agree to have a child together at least a decade ago. It isn’t like two men just have a “happy mistake” and suddenly a baby appears. Irrationally, he feels somewhat offended that he isn’t the biological parent, but why should he? Maybe this universe’s Drake has a vasectomy before he and Launchpad met. Maybe this universe’s Drake has a history of dating _women_.

Despite everything, he feels a mild warmth blossoming in his chest. There is no way to know how closely their worlds mirror each other, but the idea of them being lovers across countless universes is heartening.

“Launchpad, are we married?” Drake asks, hopefully. He gazes at this new Launchpad with a newfound fondness. He must be very special to this world’s Drake.

“Married?” Launchpad asks, laughing loudly at the idea as if it were a hilarious joke. He slaps his leg just to accentuate this take. “You mean me and you? Gee, DW, is this your way of saying you’re bicurious? I mean, I’ll support you and all, as long as you don’t come onto me.” He’s still laughing, rubbing at the tears of amusement welling in the corner of his eyes.

“Bi?” Drake asks, vaguely shocked and hurt by the response. He shakes his head. “No, I’m not bi, I’m gay.”

“Better let Morgana onto that little secret,” Launchpad snarks.

Morgana? Like the one from the old Darkwing Duck show? But she wasn’t real! She was a fictional character! Darkwing Duck had dated her, a powerful, beautiful, seductive sorceress that often served as the episode’s antagonist as well as his love interest. Their relationship had been one of continuous ambiguity. But she had dated Darkwing Duck, not Drake Mallard, they weren’t the same people.

At least, they weren’t the same people in his universe.

How can Drake Mallard and Launchpad McQuack and Morgana Macawber all exist in the same dimension?

Drake’s head is spinning. The ground is churning beneath his feet. Of all the bad luck a guy can face in one day, is he now stuck in the middle of an earthquake?

He doesn’t even realize he’s falling until he sees the floor quickly approaching beneath him. The air is sharply and painfully knocked out of his lungs as a sudden pressure punches into his stomach, his head snaps forward into empty air. A pair of large, muscular arms are holding him, but they are not the arms he knows. He clings to them anyway, needing their strength. The ground shakes again and then something soft is beneath him. The bed. Launchpad lies him gently on the pillows and Drake can hear the little girl panicking somewhere in the room.

“We have to get him to the doctor!”

“Gee, Gosalyn, I don’t know, you know your father hates doctors.”

Gosalyn!

The little girl is supposed to be Gosalyn?

But she’s so young! And she looks so different! No wonder he hadn’t recognized her. His Gosalyn is nothing like this child. She’s his crime-fighting partner, a confident, competent young teenager with an independence streak as wide across as the English Channel. Both her feathers and hair are darker shades and she dresses so much more maturely. Because she is mature. She’s a young lady in her own right, forced to grow up far too quickly.

She would never dream of calling him any name that could be considered even remotely paternal.

“I’m fine,” he manages weakly. He attempts to sit up, but his head is still spinning. He feels like vomiting and takes a couple of deep breaths. They’re tight. This body is in such poorer shape than his own and the pressure of trying to breathe in this position is evident. “Can somebody get me some water?”

“I’ve got it!” Gosalyn yells, quick on her feet. Her bright red pigtails disappear out the door. Drake collapses back against the pillow, draping a hand across his eyes. Even the hand feels strange, the fingers longer and thinner than what he is used to. Almost delicate. Despite the plump body, his fingers and wrists are so much more fragile than what he is used to.

“If you think it might be something we need to keep secret, we could call one of the doctors at S.H.U.S.H. instead,” Launchpad offers up. He’s staying close to Drake’s side now which he finds comforting. It might not be his Launchpad but it’s a Launchpad and he seems as sweet and devoted as his own. He doesn’t even pull away when Drake takes his hand and pulls it close so that he can hug it close to his chest. Like Drake’s, Launchpad’s fingers seem thinner, but this Launchpad is overall smaller than his own so it’s not surprising.

Content with this little physical contact, Drake thinks over what the larger duck just revealed. S.H.U.S.H? Why would this Launchpad have any knowledge of how to contact S.H.U.S.H? Does Darkwing Duck work for the organization? This body is so much older than his own, this world must be from the future, maybe in ten years Drake will be working for S.H.U.S.H. in his own world. Right now, though, he’s all but a nobody.

“I’m okay,” Drake reassures, getting sick at the idea of trying to deal with a renowned organization like S.H.U.S.H. at this moment. He tightens his grip on the arm, ignoring the uncomfortable look at Launchpad’s face as he fidgets uncomfortably. “Just a dizzy spell.”

“Here you go, Dad!”

Gosalyn leaps onto the bed directly beside him, all but shoving a clear bottle into his face. Drake flinches and pulls back on reflex, releasing Launchpad’s arm, then smiles a half-hearted smile. Launchpad takes several steps away and rubs at the place near his wrist where Drake had been touching him.

“Thanks, Gosalyn.” He takes the bottle in his hand, so surprised by the heft of it he nearly drops it. A thirty-two ounce bottle? Who sells bottled water in thirty-two ounces? But the name is what catches his attention when he looks at the label. “Coo-Coo Fizzy Water? That’s the brand that turned Bud Flood into the Liquidator!”

“Uh, yeah, I know,” Launchpad says, dropping both arms to his sides. “I was there when it happened.”

“So the Liquidator exists in this dimension?” Drake asks. His mind is flitting back to his own interactions with the mutant, and how painful they had been, but the supervillain wasn’t from his dimension, he was a character from a television show until Bulba had called him forth from the show’s universe. He clarifies that he is referring to an actual person rather than the character, just in case. “As a real criminal?”

“Why are you talking like an alien mind controlling zombie monster slurped out your brain?” Gosalyn asks, crossing her arms defiantly across her chest and plopping down onto her butt. The movement causes the bed to bounce slightly under her. By the way she’s staring at him, Drake knows she actually expects an answer. Precocious little tike.

“Okay, listen,” Drake begins, cradling his comically oversized bottle of water in his arms. Thing’s bigger than a baby, he swears. “This is going to sound crazy but you apparently live in a world where mutant water people exist so it shouldn’t sound that absurd. I am not the Drake Mallard from your dimension. I live in a different version of this world and I just woke up in this bedroom, in this body, and I have no idea why except I think it has something to do with the Solego Circuit.”

They just stare at him. Launchpad blinks. Gosalyn scowls. The seconds tick by. Nervously, Drake twists the cap off his water bottle and chugs from it, his pained throat welcoming the icy chill of it.

“Are you messing with us?” Gosalyn demands to know finally, furrowing her brow in intense concentration. She’s staring him down as if she can tell whether or not he’s lying by just the look on his face.

“No, Gosalyn, I swear, I am not lying,” Drake swears, setting the bottle down at his side. His raises a hand in the Junior Woodscout pledge. “In my dimension you’re fourteen and you’re my crime fighting partner, not my daughter.”

“I think he’s telling the truth,” Gosalyn says sternly, looking up towards Launchpad. “Dad would never say he’s not my dad, no matter how hard he bumped his head.”

“I think you’re right, Gos,” Launchpad agrees solemnly. He reaches for her, pulling her off the bed and squeezing her against his chest. She accepts his comforting touch, turning her face into his forearm. “Don’t get too close to him, we don’t know if he’s dangerous.”

“For Christ’s sake I,” Drake lets out a puff of air and reaches up to push his bangs out of the way only to remember he has no bangs. This is going to take some getting used to. His entire family is blessed with full heads of hair, he never imagined dealing with thinning feathers. He hits his thigh in annoyance and then throws his hands up in the air in exclamation. “I’m not dangerous! I’m Drake Mallard, just from another dimension. I fight crime as Darkwing Duck. I always tip twenty-five percent. I pay my taxes on time. I’m a good guy!”

“Then why did you steal my dad’s body, huh?” Gosalyn demands to know, unexpectantly lunging for him. Launchpad grabs her before she can get too far and she kicks at him, complaining to the larger redhead, “I’ll get him to talk!”

“I never said I wouldn’t talk,” Drake yelps as he attempts to scramble away, but the bed is smaller than the one he shares with his own Launchpad and he falls off the opposite side of the bed. He lands hard, crashing against a hideous brown carpet, skinning his knee. Breathlessly, he grabs at the side and pulls himself back up over the edge, all the joints in this body protesting. “I told you! It’s the Solego Circuit!”

“And what is that again?” Launchpad asks, struggling to hold the rambunctious girl in her arms. She’s hissing and spitting like an angry kitten. Adorable but the claws can still be dangerous, in this case the claws being that bow and arrow she managed to somehow procure once more out of thin air.

“It’s this, I don’t know, scientific formula?” Drake attempts to explain. He cowers where he is, just barely peaking out over the edge in case she manages to finally get off a shot. “I’m not the science guy, that’s more Fenton’s thing. You can use the plans to create a machine that has the ability to move things between different dimensions, including people. In my dimension, somebody used the formula to build a machine called the Ramrod but it was destroyed and he’s in prison now. Somebody else must have moved me from my dimension to yours.”

“Why would they do that?” Launchpad asks. Gosalyn suddenly bites him and he screams, releasing the girl. She jumps over the bed and Drake ducks down, crawling under the bed as quickly as he can.

“I don’t know! I wasn’t there!” Drake pleads for mercy. He feels small hands on his ankles, pulling at him. He wants to kick back but how do you get away with kicking a child? Even one threatening you with a deadly weapon? “I told you, I just woke up and I was here!”

“Then why do you know about this Sluggo Circuit thing?” Gosalyn grills him. Judging that her father’s body is too heavy for her to pull out, Drake hears her drop onto the floor and can sense that she is now following him under the bed. He claws at the floor, kicking against the ugly carpeting and wishing he was on something harder – both flooring and stomach-wise. The carpet scrapes at his skinned teeth. “And how do you know that’s what happened unless you did have something to do with it?”

“It’s just a guess,” Drake cries out. He wiggles out the other side of the mattress and makes for Launchpad, hiding behind him. The larger duck tries to turn to see him, but Drake grabs him near the elbows and holds him still, anchoring him in place. “A well-educated guess because I’ve seen its powers before. The reason I know about it is because, because my Gosalyn’s grandfather was thrown into another dimension through it. We’ve been working together to try to find him and bring him back.”

She has caught up with him. But her sprint toward Launchpad ends with a couple of slow steps as she stops about a foot from where Drake is clenching his eyes shut and gritting his teeth, waiting for the blow to come. It’s the same sort of anticipation he used to feel back when he had worked as a stunt double, readying himself for the unavoidable shock and pain.

“Your Gosalyn’s grandfather is alive?,” Gosalyn questions, her voice going soft and quiet. Drake opens one eye, cautiously, and sees her watching him. All the rage has melted from her childish features and standing there now is a hurt looking girl, trembling slightly as Launchpad reaches out to touch her hair once more. Her eyes are huge and shining. “Really? You're not lying about that??”

“I'm not lying about anything,” Drake says, reaching up to try to run his fingers through his hair. He makes a face then winces. His thinning hair isn’t something he should be thinking of right now, not with a little girl looking at him with perhaps the most broken expression he has ever seen in his life. He feels the urge to reach out and take her in his arms but he allows Launchpad to comfort her instead, he’s just some stranger that stole her father’s body to this child. “Yeah, we think so. Unless something happened to him in whatever universe he’s in, anyway, we haven’t been able to locate him yet.”

“But you’re trying to help your Gosalyn find him?” Gosalyn prods, “You’re trying to be her hero?”

“I, yeah,” Drake says. He finally releases his grip on Launchpad and takes a step to the side, revealing his full body. “She’s, she’s my family. That’s what families do for each other.”

Drake is glad when she hugs him first, because it gives him an excuse to return it. Without fearing what he assumes would have been one hell of an assbeating.

"Do you know how to get hold of Fenton Crackshell-Cabrera?" Drake asks Launchpad as he looks down at the small girl with her face buried in his pajama top.

**Author's Note:**

> Anyway, this is short for now and reeks of early 2000s fics. Does anybody remember when bodyswitch fics were such a big thing in the early 2000s?


End file.
